


Sickness Of Poacher's Pride

by Negansplumbusinmyrumham



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (Comics), The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Child Death Mention, Daryl mentioned, Gen, M/M, Other, Rated for future chapters, Self Harm, alexandria fudges things up bigtime, jumpy timeline, negan being soft and sad and kind of a woobie, negan responds poorly, rick and carl get captured, simon is a bastard man, simon/negan if you squint, take note of the warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-07-22 20:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19992691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Negansplumbusinmyrumham/pseuds/Negansplumbusinmyrumham
Summary: One day it will come to claim its pound of flesh.When it's done, there won't be anything left.





	1. They Think That You Emit The Light (but you only take it in)

Sitting in the cell and having had plenty of time to think about it, Negan oscillated between remorse and rage. Rick had started it- Even the playground logic of small children would have dictated retaliation as the appropriate response. 

Whenever the guilt became too big he would spend days, weeks, months, even now the door would open and he would be sure that Rick was finally going to at least speak to him. That there would be a conversation, at the very least there would be an execution. Rick never came down, though, not once in the three years that had passed. 

The anger would take over and he would hurl himself on the bars and curse and foul things would leave his mouth, things so bad that sometimes he threw his body with the force intended to bruise, to break on something stronger than his own bones. Those things gathered in welts under his skin and fill the tender threads of fracture in his structure.

Things about Simon.

Things about Carl.

\---

Rick had refused his proposition of a truce, which is why he hadn’t felt any worse than usual when he felt his rival’s knee pop like a ball jointed doll, his femur coming into pieces like firewood and reminding him in what was supposed to be his dying delirium of a fire he’d built as a scout in grade 3. Before passing out, he didn’t feel the gash in his neck through the fog of a memory so inconsequential and wondered if, in that second so many years ago, he’d felt any sense that it would be his very last thought.

It was part of some high-road power-trip that spared a life he’d been ready to part with. His first thought upon waking was a concern that, having survived, he no longer knew what his last thought would be. 

He dreaded that it would be about what happened at the sanctuary.

\---

After the incident, he had every reason to be loose with his words. He hadn’t been able to formulate a full thought. He cried, for fuck’s sake. He cried real tears and made a fist so tight that his bed sheets were stained. The first coherent thought he had for days was that it was impossible to hold blood, the tighter his fist became the more flowed out.

\---

Simon had tried to take care of him, at least as good as Simon could. There was something off about him, which is why Negan trusted him in the first place. Bored rumors rose up in waves that he was “patient zero” or a roamer that had been turned back in some science lab. The sanctuary gossiped like teenagers, so he was glad nobody but Simon had seen him in that state. 

He’d been walked to the bathroom a few times a day. He’d been sat, catatonic, on the floor of the shower with his boxers still on while Simon checked to keep the water from burning or freezing him. The lieutenant sat across from him and supervised him eating long after the food had gone cold. It was something like love, or family, and the thought made him even sicker and angrier for the loss that grimes and his people and inflicted upon them.

\---

Rick had been patched up and sent back to his people, which should have been the absolute end of it. He left The Sanctuary alive, with his baby and his girlfriend safe and waiting for them, and things were supposed to move forward for everybody. 

Negan had even decided he would stop collections from Alexandria. He’d said this magnanimously but thinking of the town, of the people in it and the things they had done and the things he had done to them, he couldn’t stand returning.

It wasn’t enough, but it was something, which was more than Rick had offered after his own part in the disaster. The way Negan saw it, he was over-reacting. Four people had died, just four, and all of them grown men. If he only looked at the math of it, which he tried to, four was barely a dent.

\---

Rick made it clear that his people were more important than any others. Everything was justified once he took it over, everybody was disposable if they didn’t sleep within the same mile as him. Hell, even those that did were only good for the work they could put out or the body they could provide between a threat and his little handful of exalted companions that he considered a family.

The monster who took out an outpost of sleeping workers as easy as he was killing roamers fell over with his head in the dirt and blubbered and soaked himself in snot after losing two, one who would still be alive if he’d had any real authority to keep his people under control for what only really had to last five minutes. 

The psychopath who had committed war crimes before a war existed sulked and sniffled in the RV that they’d only driven out and looped back. He was pathetic, so broken that Negan couldn’t even think of anything more to do to him that would be fun if he was already sobbing like that before he started. The fucker had the nerve to say to himself, “this doesn’t happen to us.”

\---

He’d put an immediate stop to it as soon as he knew, but by then it was too late. Rick sat across from him and before he spoke, and he could sense the same thing he caught glimpses of sometimes in Simon, the resignation of a living roamer. Before he spoke, they were even, and Negan was satisfied with having him reduced to the emptiness he’d felt after what the Alexandrians had done.

\---

The first misunderstanding had been as logical as it was devastating. Alexandria was preparing for war, sending the children and women out of town. It only made sense to do the same. It only made sense to use the unmarked outpost that had been retired after the area was considered too low-traffic to maintain surveillance of. 

However, it also made sense to the attacking Alexandrians that the most important arsenal of weapons would be hidden in the secret outpost they stumbled upon. 

It only made sense to torch the place, destroy the weapons.

\---

He figured that things wouldn’t go well for his lieutenant after the war was lost. Simon was hung. He knew this because, when they brought in his stumbling shape to taunt him with, the bag covering his head hung to the side and his stubbled jaw slipped out. They staked him to a metal pipe overhead by a chain around his middle. The pregnant girl made sure to tell Negan that they lifted him from the ground to strangle, not broken his neck with a drop.

Sometimes, Simon would lurch an Negan would be sure he was reaching with his rotting hands (he noticed, almost impressed, that the man’s fingernails were missing) for help, for mercy, for comfort. 

They had him strung too far to bite even when Negan dragged his bed to the bars in order to reach his hand out further. The closest he came was, once, brushing a slimy fingertip with his own.

When Simon decomposed so badly that the smell rose up from the cellar and disturbed some of the townspeople, they took him to the surface. The same girl, who had recently had the baby, made sure to tell him that his second in command was put into the ground without being put down.

It was lonely without him, so lonely that he could only respond that he was glad her son was born healthy. In that moment, he genuinely was happy about the baby, the only thing he would let his mind process in the moment being a new life.

\---

The second misunderstanding, he accepted the responsibility for. He hadn’t been in the right frame of mind, bitter that anything could still shock him. 

Little skeletons crumbled as they snapped at his men. There were more bodies than he had seen in one place. It had been so steady for so long and, in a night, it was gone. He was dizzy with the smell, the stink of mortality that cemented him in place. Things like this didn’t happen to the saviors. 

They were ordered to treat all bodies as roamers, although it was unspoken knowledge that some were hanging on to life but too badly burned to repair. The wrath of the fire kept them from communicating this in anything other than groans that were similar enough to the turned that he pretended not to know the difference.

All he knew of the raid to find those responsible were that there were two guilty parties in custody. His brain was damp with the tears that he finally gained the control to hold back in his eyes. They knew what they had set fire to, they had to have, and they let it burn anway. They ran. They had to have heard the screaming and they ran anyway. Whoever they were, he could never punish them enough.

When Simon asked what to do, he said to chop up the greasy biker and feed it to them. After Simon announced they’d run out of meat, and asked what else to do, Negan had made the mistake of responding, “Anything.” He convinced himself that he’d used the word out of exhaustion, but occasionally doubted that he was totally blameless for his choice in vocabulary.

\---

Rick wasn’t wearing anything. Negan hadn’t been expecting him to, but to see the canvas of his skin so completely painted with no obstruction was something to behold. 

“There’s been an administrative error” was how Negan learned to phrase it, breaking a silence that he hadn’t realized was growing painfully loud.

“Your son was brought to Dr. Carson last night. He didn’t survive.” He made the announcement as bare and clinical as he could.

“Of what?”

He stared incredulously for a moment. Did Rick really want him to say it?

“Like I said,” his voice grew sharper, “there was an administrative error. Boundaries were poorly communicated. Carl was injured during an interrogation, a department to which I’d delegated my Lieutenant.” He tried to remember the phrasing Carson had told him to use. He tried not to break down into  _ ‘ImSoSorryGodOhGodImSoSorryIDidntKnowIDidntKnowFuckImSoFuckingSorryNoNoNo’ _ , which is what his brain was screaming. 

“I neglected to properly supervise, and I take responsibility for that. I’m willing to offer you amnesty on the condition that there be no further contact between our communities.” His puppet-mouth tasted chemical with the stilted negotiation.

“How did Carl die?” Rick growled.

“Sepsis.” One word.

“Carson wants to check you over tonight, and by tomorrow morning we’ll have you in a van and this will all be over.” He added the last part himself- it felt human to do so.

This would never be over for either of them.

\---

Normally, he dealt with these things using Lucile as soon as he had the slightest proof that his rules were being violated. 

Simon, though, had acted with permission, and appeared genuinely surprised when he was reprimanded.

“You said, ‘anything’.” He defended. “Given the shit they pulled, all those kids, I thought ‘anything’ meant  _ ‘anything’ _ .”

He argued, “That makes sense, doesn’t it?”

It made sense.

All the worst things always made sense.

\---

“What kind of injuries?” Rick had interrogated as if they were on opposite sides of the table.

Negan thought of Carson’s answer  _ ‘perforated intestines’ _ but instead he said, “Same kind as yours.”

Rick didn’t make a noise for a long time. When he did, it came out sounding like a car horn.

He used Carson’t words again, shouting over the sound, “in light of this unfortunate miscommunication, your death sentence has been commuted to time served.”

When the noise wouldn’t stop he reached out and touched fingers that had been broken and never set. Fingers that had probably clawed and strained and dragged along the cement cell, “We don’t do those kind of things at the sanctuary, Rick. That isn’t tolerated here.”

The gravity in the room changed. The air as heavy and weighed on Negan’s shoulders, his back, his neck pushed into a slump. His mouth felt sewn shut with barbed wire. He wished, in that moment, that it was in order to spare him having to break this silence again.

Could any words be more useless than, “This doesn’t happen to us?”


	2. All Guts No Glory; All Survivor No Guilt

Simon was all hands, a centipede man who covered Ricks body impossibly with feeler-fingers and an antenna’s vibration of a whisper when his stinger pierced through. It wasn't intolerable; Simon was a brute about it but couldn't hold out longer than a few minutes. Just when he was sure that it would break, it would end in lukewarm pressure and sticky shame that rotten inside of him. Simon had stopped feeding him days ago, no twitch of his insides left to expel the filth the nights left behind.

He welcomed it. When he screamed, he could feel the soot that rose from burning babies leave his lungs and only longed to scream them emptier. Simons big hands over his mouth silenced useless apologies. He could never pay enough for what he had done, but was grateful for Simon’s contorted efforts to make a dent in his penance. 

The larger man’s performance had an air of strange religion to it, coring the bile from his blackened innards. He withdrew and, with the syphoning sensation of his cock exiting to the tip, he imagined the sin being pulled out.

Simon's, however, were not the punishing hands of Dwight, who hit with the metal of his belt, wrapped the leather around Rick’s throat until his face because Lori’s smiling down at him and he woke to dribble stomach acid down his bare chest. To Dwight’s boots, he lost teeth and had the bones of his fingers ground to flour. Dwight’s hands tore into him, tore gashes and chunks that rolled into pinwheels under the intensity of his fingernails.

Dwight sobbed snot onto his face and boxed his ears half-deaf. He twisted tender bits and ripped chunks of hair out of Rick’s hair that took chunks with it. He would choke out a name over and over again: “Sherry.” 

There was no fucking when Dwight brought the water. Sometimes there would be a humiliation, a wooden stake shoved down his throat, driving mercilessly deep until the vomit built up in his nasal passages and leaked from his ears. More than anything, Dwight liked to mess with his face. He wouldn't have denied the projection if confronted, and took what little joy could be found in the world in mutilating the pretty face. He drove pins through his prominent cheekbones, his pouty lips, the lids above his blue eyes until they dried and shriveled in his head. 

Carson gave some basic directions on amputation. Simon called dibs on one eye, and gave Dwight the other. The larger man, with a childlike enthusiasm, suggested they make is a competition. Rick was restrained on his back with belts holding his arms and legs to the side.  
“We’re trying to do a clean job. You squirm and itll be a lot messier than it has to.”  
He thought of Carl through the blinding pain, drifting in and out from shock. He thought of the blood and the stupefied look on his face, the way hed laid so quietly and whimpered only feverish moans. His strong boy. He admired him as, under the scalpel in the dim room, he screamed until the sound stopped and all that came out was air with the texture of gravel   
\---

Simon's words had to be some sick joke, or something fresh to mumble in his ear- the normal routine had begun to get stale: “You like my cock, killer?”, “Scream for me, baby, scream like you made those kids scream.”, and after his eyes were gone Simon would sink teeth into his ear, severing the lobe.   
“Do you see what they’re seeing?” he would ask, no taunting in his voice but the venum and hurt that came from watching Dwight, who hes always considered a bit of a dandelion. They were supposed to be safe though. It wasn't fun to Dwight, he ground his teeth but whimpered and turned in his sleep from the horrible things demanded of him. He snapped photos of the pulped skulls of boys too young to drink and, in the privacy or a corner, sulk with red-rimmed eyes as he organized their photographs in Negan’s album. It was as ugly as a thing could be, a 3 ring cover with a tacky floral pattern suggesting that the pages should contain some happy family memories. Inside, the irony, families destroyed. He tried to keep them alphabetized to keep from flipping through too many when Negan required them. 

Now, he didnt hide his tears. Under normal.circumstances Simon would have considered him weak, but a pregnant wife lost to char was reason enough. That wasnt the agreement Dwight had submitted to- Sherry was supposed to be safe.

So Simon could have been simply being sick and vindictive when he asked, “Know why you get me off so fast?” He teased, and Rick expected some biting comments about how pretty and delicate he was but instead Simon hissed, “You’re nothing special. Know who is?”  
A greasy laugh, sarcastic?  
When Rick didnt answer, he drove in as deep as he could and said, to the back of Rick’s lap, “Your little cyclops.”   
He waited for a reaction, and groaned when Rick's body tensed and tightened around his length.  
“Got the same pretty face, your old lady must have been a real looker” he laughed and Rick seethed. How dare this slimy bastard to even try to imagine the mother of his children. “Never been into kids but when he you put him on his back its like he can see the whole world with both eyes.”  
Rick was sure he was lying for a rise until he said, “Tough little thing, can't go near his mouth. Took the teeth out and he still bruises like a snapping turtle.”  
Rick meant to roar a threat, to shout something that would strike fear, but instead all that left him was a thread-thin moan.  
“Love him on his back, getting tears on those brave little cheeks is better than cumming in him” He grunted “Never had one that young. Legs like rubber bands.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Snapped like rubber bands too, now his legs go wider than a ball-jointed doll.”  
“No.” He hadn't meant to say it, but it was the only appropriate response he could come up with.  
“No?” Simon demanded. “How about this: tomorrow you can suck his blood off my cock before I fuck you. Put your mind to rest, yeah?” He pulsed, and before he climaxed, he groaned, “Last little bit of him you'll ever touch.”  
Rick just said the word again. This wasnt supposed to happen like this. To him or Daryl or one of the women, but not to his Carl. Not to his boy, who he sheltered with a sheriff's hat and tore throats with his teeth for and now all he could do was say it again and again as Simon mocked “Yes, yes, yes.”

“This is it,” he bragged afterwards, stroking Rick's head as it lay in his lap. He wept into the man’s thighs. “This is it.” he said again, softer this time, “No protection. No salvation. No goddamn rules. Two of you are all mine until ai decode you’re ready for the fence.” This, he said with something approaching pity.


	3. You Draw Blood Just To Taste It (You Hold Bones Just To break Them)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wasn't sure I wanted to finish this but shoutout to Staghag for always motivating me!

Simon didn’t live long enough to to be haunted by the memory, but the regret was there. As he was pulled up onto the tips of his toes, he tried to gather enough breath to spit into the crowd that had formed (he hoped to hit the pregnant girl who had rigged up the rope, and spent a good chunk of his remaining life cursing that he hadn’t thought to while she was closer). Although she wasn’t pulling the rope, he tried to kill the child inside of her through concentrating the fear into hatred when he felt what he knew would be the final tightening. 

He strained his eyes to see who was fixing the rope: some fat girl he didn’t recognize, who strained false starts that gave his throat rope-burn until the preacher came over to help her. If he’d had the air, he would have demanded some kind of last rights if only to inconvenience them before they got the satisfaction of watching him swing.  
Lifted far enough that his toes couldn’t touch the ground anymore, he tried to suppress the desperate swallowing of nothing, to keep his eyes and mouth closed and rob them of the spectacle. Sometimes his toe would catch something, a stick or a root, and flames shot up his back when he knew they could all see his helplessness as instinct kicked in and he scrambled in vain to put his weight on it.  
It went on for more than long enough to take stock of his life. He was doubtless that what he did to the kid from Alexandria was the worst thing he’d ever done.

\--

The order made sense: “Anything”. It had been said with such finality that Simon could be sure there was no space for Negan to have been implying anything else. What else was there outside of the rules that “Anything” could possibly cover?  
He would later admit to himself that he’d been more than happy to take it that way. It had been a while and he wasn’t fond of dealing with the wives- the idea of arranging a fuck through a 3rd party with a girl he knew didn’t really want to sleep with him was offputting. The irony of this was not lost on him.

Unlike Dwight, he hadn’t lost anyone in the fire. He was angry at what he complained was an inconvenience, the quiet carbon monoxide gloom that overtook The Sanctuary, because anger was easy. Mourning was something The Saviors made other people do, and he wouldn’t let himself be dragged to that level. So he complained about the lag in efficiency, the responsibilities that were hoisted onto him as second in command, the goddamn sulking that kept filling his head with reminders of what happened.   
Ashes that had gathered in the hair above his lip fell into his mouth that day. He’d cannibalized what he was sure had to be an infant's corpse, and ever since the incident he’d taken to biting his mouth shut and rubbing past the bristle so often that there were two broken-in teeth marks and he’d rubbed the skin under his nose raw. He thought of shaving, but worried that Negan was so far gone that it might startle him.

Unlike Dwight, who was manic with a violence that he said made his hands feel swollen five times their size, Simon simmered. The loss hurt; any loss wounded his pride, but then there was Negan. The man he so admired had wilted into a blubbering child.   
“Little hands and feet”  
“Still smells, still smells”  
“So afraid- must have cursed me”  
He babbled the non-sequiturs in between Simon feeding him canned soup from the edge of the bed. It dribbled into his beard and stirred memories of the last months of a grandfather who’d died deep in dementia when Simon was still a child.   
Negan had moments of lucidity, where he would blink and look up from the floor of the shower and there would be shame in his eyes before they glazed back over. Those were the moments that hurt the worst, and so those were the nights when his actions were most unspeakable.

\---

It had been fun to cut up the biker, even more fun to deliver him in parts. To Rick, he first gave only a piece of what could have been any raw meat, but Carl (he only learned the name a few days before his execution in Alexandria) was given an entire hand. Both yielded satisfying results.  
Rick, upon hearing the source of the meat, vomited immediately, and gave Simon the perfect opportunity to move a step further.   
“Go on.” He gestured toward the pile.   
Rick looked confused, still retching.   
“Boss said to keep you fed, not gonna starve on my watch.”  
It took him three attempts to get it down. By the time he did, it was a liquid that he caught in his hands only to swallow for a few more seconds and let it out again.  
Carl, when presented with the hand, knew exactly who it belonged to and groaned at what her perceived as nothing more than a threat.   
Carl fought, but he was small enough that Simon took him to the ground with no effort and straddled him, knees on his hands. He broke Carl’s nose in, so flat that he had no choce but to open his mouth. He finger-fucked the young captive’s throat with the severed hand. He drove the nail of his thumb into the missing eye until it broke through the scar tissue and Carl finally took a bite and swallowed.   
“That’s a good boy” he brushed back the long hair and cooed, infantilizing, and felt the teen’s cheeks burn with humiliation. He kept the severed appendage on his lips and finger by finger they reduced the hand to bone. Simon was thorough, pointing out every missed scrap and demanding it be consumed.

They kept the biker alive for as long as they could, him holding clamps and turnaquits for Carson while the day’s serving of him was removed. He’d been beaten bad when they brought him in, and could only expand his one uncollapsed lung enough to groan against the pain. They got the limbs off, his tongue, his cock, but couldn’t get to the middle of him before coming in to find him turned.   
Both captives received a polaroid. In it, the biker’s face was barely visible through the blur of reanimated squirming. 

\--

When “anything” came into play, Simon had started with Rick. It was more satisfying to overpower the former leader on that first night, to pry his arms up over his head and have him on the mattress that he would have to spend the rest of his life sleeping on. He made a choked sound of relief when Simon finished with him. Afterward, he stood just out of view of the cell to hear his victim cry in what he thought was privacy and relished the theft of the smaller man’s dignity.   
Eventually, Rick stopped fighting. He would lower his eyes when the long shadow stretched to breach the barrier of his cell. He would strip on his own, clinging to the shredded clothing that Simon’s hands had torn through in order to save them from being completely destroyed. A few times, Simon was sure that he could even feel Rick moving his hips in response.  
The few times he felt remorse, he shut it down by telling himself that what happened in the cell wasn’t really ‘rape’ (he hated that word, and when it crossed his mind he saw himself as a smog of filth, the animated polution from a kid’s cartoon about saving the environment). He expected he’d enjoy the first time, and he did, he enjoyed in every time in fact, but he made sure to enjoy it as innocent torture. This wasn’t sex, using one body to hurt another was no different than striking a blow. He came because there was stimulation, and what else can a man do when stimulated so consistently, but it was not sex, and so it couldn’t be rape. It was just torture, innocent torture.

Even after the permission was given, he didn’t have much interest in Carl. Dwight lashed him skinless and, with only his mouth to breath through and a steady stream of blood from his sinuses, his breath was notably foul. He was pulpy and coated with the slime of freshly ripped scabs and pissed in the corner closest to the door. Visually, it was hard to even see him as a human, and the way he growled and snapped and threw his elbows with no regard for opening old gashes.   
It made sense, leaving him to Dwight- the kid he was supposed to have was incinerated, and he would take the offspring of the man who led the attack. Eventually, though, Dwight moved in to crying in stairwells and sitting bleach-eyed with the rest of the fathers as they all wondered to themselves what the opposite of an orphan was. The responsible thing to do, Simon felt (hell, the charitable thing to do, relieving Dwight of his responsibilities in this harrowing time), was to double down on his rounds

Carl had been taking beatings for months, his insides were probably already all fucked up. Simon resented that, when the boy finally did give out, it fell on his shoulders. The first time Simon entered the cell Carl groaned and brought the blanket up to cover his face, a grumpy teenager wanting to sleep in through Sunday mass.   
He’d spent the first week trying to repair the frail body, setting breaks (maybe just to shift the bone and hear a scream, but that was his own business and the action itself appeared compassionate). He let patches that had been stripped almost to bone scab over, brought water, even had Carson come in and fix his nose so he could breathe through it again. He spoke in a soothing voice, laced only slightly with a threat, that his baby sister was safe at home (after which he would usually remind him in some passive-aggressive way of how many baby girls weren’t, how their soot was on his hands).   
He healed until Carl no longer cowered away from him building something that was worth destroying after his sessions with Rick grew boring. It worked perfectly, so perfectly that Carl thought his wounds were being re-dressed when his clothing was removed. He laid with his back on the bed, legs drawn up in an attempt at modesty as always, that adolescent self-consciousness that blaired as an unwelcome reminder of how young he really was.   
Simon came over to the bed, unbuckling.  
“You fucked yet?”  
“What?” But it was clear he understood.  
“Fucking.” Simon pulled him into place. “Have you ever fucked?”  
Carl shook his head.  
“But you know what it is?”  
He must have, because for the first time since he was brought to the cell, the kid started crying. Simon drew away for a moment, as if smoke had been blown into his face. His erection flagged, the small body beside him immobilized by one heavy hand.  
After that, he used pills.

\---

Carson played stupid, as had been part of the agreement between him and Simon to assist in overseeing the torture. Carl was on the table, looking like he’d been bitten, his stomach purple and swollen with the blood of a rupture.   
Negan dabbed at his forehead with a cloth, doting on him like a nanny, so sick of little things being broken. He finally looked awake, as if the life was draining from Carl back into him; the satisfaction of revenge was his, and he could still act morally superior. Under the melodramatic misery of the scene, he knew the leader was living in the best of both worlds.   
“I never would have let them,” he promised the dying boy. “If I knew, oh my god, Carl if I knew I would have stopped it. We don’t do that. We don’t do that.”  
But they did, and they had, and Negan himself had given the order.  
“Didn’t even know you were down there, I never would have put a kid down there,” he lied to the dying boy. “It’s over now, you’ll be okay. You’re going home. Just hang in there, this is over.”  
It was over within the hour, and Negan snapped and scolded afterwards that he could have been saved had he been brought in at the beginning of the week.  
“We risk out fucking lives to bring you three of the murderers,” Simon roared back, “You want them dead in the worst way. Remember that? You want it slow, you want us to do ‘anything’, you want them to suffer. Remember that?”  
It was vicious and electric and almost love, knowing that Negan needed him to be the ugly half. Somebody needed him, Negan needed him, and he would never let his leader down even if the man pretended not to know what was best.

\---

After his capture, Rick had asked him, “Why?”  
Bound in the corner of the church, knowing it was his last day on earth he responded “Boss told me to.”

**Author's Note:**

> Im probably going to make this two or three parts with different POVs. Comments are super appreciated and totally motivate me to write faster <3


End file.
